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This wikiHow teaches you how to determine which of your Windows computer's two hard drives is the primary and which is the secondary. In order to configure master and slave settings for hard drives, your computer's motherboard must support multiple internal hard drives and you must have the second hard drive installed. "Master" drives typically store the operating system, while "Slave" drives are used for additional storage and backup.

Make sure that your second hard drive is attached. Before you can determine which hard drive is the "Master" and which is the "Slave", you'll need to have both drives attached to your computer. While the "Master" drive is usually your computer's built-in hard drive, the second one must be attached manually to your computer's motherboard.

Begin repeatedly tapping the BIOS key. The BIOS key varies from computer to computer, but is usually one of the "F" keys (e.g., F2), the Delete key, or the Esc key. You'll need to press the BIOS key before your computer's startup screen appears.

You may receive a prompt at the bottom of the screen right before the startup screen that says "Press [key] to enter setup" or something similar.

If you miss the BIOS window, you'll need to restart your computer and try again.

Find the list of hard drives. At the top of the BIOS screen, there should be several tabs. You can navigate through these tabs by using the arrow keys. Scroll through the tabs and examine each tab's information until you find a list of hard drives (or "Hard Disks") that are included in the computer.

Change the hard drive to "Master" status. With the hard drive selected, press the "Configure" or "Change" key (usually ↵ Enter) as listed in the key legend that's at the bottom or side of the screen. You should see "Master" pop up next to the hard drive's name.[1]XResearch source

In some cases, you may have to select None to the right of the hard drive's name before pressing the "Configure" key.

You can also set this drive to "Auto" instead to allow your operating system to select "Master" for it.

Community Q&A

Hard shut it off by pressing the power button, then pressing the power button again once it is off. Or, go into your start menu, then press the on/off/shut down or similar symbols. Choose the restart option.

Assuming you are not using something antiquated that can be strapped (jumpered), the quickest way to reverse the order of the hard drives in the BIOS is to swap the cables, either on the back of the drives or on the motherboard. Otherwise, if it is nothing more than wanting to default to what you refer to as the slave on start up, simply change the boot order in the BIOS.

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